When humans first step onto the surface of Mars in the coming decades, they'll be like kids in a candy store; so many rocks to turn over or chip away at. Is that discoloured patch algae? A team of Spanish engineers are working on a Cyborg Astrobiologist that could help observe the landscape with a video camera, see what the astronauts see, and suggest places that might be interesting for further study. Larry Klaes reports on this interesting new technology, but he thinks robots could use a system like this even sooner.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft took this picture of Saturn with its moon Tethys in the foreground. Tethys is 1,071 (665 miles) across. Cassini took this image on June 10, 2005 when it was approximately 1.4 million km (900,000 miles) away from Saturn.

Space Shuttle managers have announced that Discovery won't be lifting off until late next week, at the earliest. Engineers and managers are still trying to troubleshoot exactly what caused a problem with the external tank's fuel gauge. It's possible that one of the new safety improvements, implemented as part of the Return to Flight effort might be causing the glitch. If the shuttle doesn't launch by July 31, it will need to wait again until September before there's another opportunity.

One of the more productive telescopes in space is the tiny Canadian MOST satellite (Microvariability and Oscillations of Stars). Developed and maintained on a shoestring - $7 million USD - MOST is only the size of a suitcase, but it has a very sensitive instrument which can detect the variations in star brightness. MOST has been used to analyze recently discovered extrasolar planets as they pass in front of their parent stars, and even get some information about their atmospheres.

Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! We'll begin this week by watching the dance of Venus and viewing beautiful star system Omicron Cygni. Although the Moon goes full this week, we can still take pleasure in exploring its bright ray systems. Need more? Then let's have a look at Epsilon Lyrae and 61 Cygni. Simply stargazing during the warm summer nights can bring its own rewards, for the Aquarid meteor shower is highly active. So turn your eyes to the skies, because...

Here's what's up!

Some children do grow up and become space travellers. Along the way a series of powerful experiences may act as propellants, advancing them into the future. Winston Scott in his book Reflections from Earth Orbit warmly expresses his memories, from watching Saturday morning cartoons with his brother to undertaking EVA's with NASA colleagues. This sharing of his experiences and personal highlights allows an inside look into one person's advancement into space travel.

In this nearly side-view of Saturn's rings, it's possible to see the two ring shepherd moons: Pandora (right) and Prometheus (left). Saturn's F ring extends out to the far right, and contains a large amount of fine, icy material that is probably the size of dust, unlike the B ring which has boulder-sized objects in it. This picture was taken when Cassini was 1.85 million km (1.15 million miles) away from Saturn.

During a recent flyby of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, NASA's Cassini spacecraft got a good look at the bright Xanadu region - where the Huygens probe landed earlier this year. One unusual feature is the strange bright line, which scientists are calling the "smile". This 560 km (345 mile) long feature is quite bright in several of Cassini's instruments; in both visible and infrared wavelengths. It's exact nature is still unknown, so scientists will continue to gather evidence from future flybys.

The Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) achieved a new milestone this week when it made its first observations. APEX consists of a 12-metre telescope designed to view the Universe at submillimeter wavelengths: a part of the radio spectrum especially useful for viewing colder objects. APEX is the same instrument that will eventually go into the much larger ALMA project, which will consist of at least 64 of these telescopes, arrayed to function as a single instrument.

The European Space Agency's Mars Express has taken an new photograph of Nicholson Crater, located at the southern edge of Amazonis Planitia on Mars. This crater is 100 km (62 km) across and has a very large raised central mount. Large craters often have this kind of central peak, which forms when material rebounds after a meteor impact, but Nicholson Crater's peak is heavily eroded by wind and water.

When the first astronauts set foot on Mars, they'll need to keep a nervous eye out for the many dust devils that crisscross the surface of the Red Planet. In fact, if you were standing next to NASA's Spirit rover in the middle of the Martian day, you might see 6 dust devils zipping across the landscape. While they wouldn't be dangerous, these devils are electrified, and could disrupt communications, damage electrical devices, and clog up spacesuits with statically clingy Martian dust that would be very difficult to remove.

NASA has announced that the space shuttle Discovery's earliest launch window will be on Sunday, July 17 at 1914 UTC (2:14 pm EDT); although, it could be much later. A problem with a fuel gauge on the shuttle's external tank halted the countdown on Wednesday. Engineers have so far been unable to find the source of the problem. The shuttle's launch window will last until the end of the July, and then opens up in September again.

The analysis software that NASA uses to inspect photographs of the Earth is starting to recognize changing events on our planet's surface, like Spring thaws, snowfalls and volcanic eruptions. In fact, the software is now giving orders back to NASA's Earth Observing-1 satellite on where it should be pointing its camera. The software has taken more than 1,500 photographs of frozen lakes and can recognize when the ice has melted. Software like this could be used to track changing events on other planets, like dust storms on Mars or search for ice volcanoes on Europa.

A backdrop in many science fiction stories is to have multiple suns in the sky. Astronomers have now found such a world, called HD 188753 Ab. Our heroes couldn't set foot on this planet, though, since it's a "hot jupiter"; roughly the mass of Jupiter, but orbiting its parent star every 3.3 days. The other two stars in the system take 25.7 years to orbit the main star (about the distance from the Sun to Saturn), and spin around each other every 156 days,

Astronomers have discovered a massive explosion in a galaxy 11.5 billion light years away. This explosion is producing streams of high speed material called "superwinds" which are nearly tearing the galaxy apart. These explosions are thought to put a limit on the amount of star formation that can happen in any galaxy, since these superwinds will blow excess gas and dust out into intergalactic space. This helps explain why key elements needed for the formation of planets and life were well distributed in galaxies so early on in the history of the Universe.

The return to flight launch of the space shuttle Discovery was delayed Wednesday when a faulty fuel gage failed a prelaunch check. The shuttle actually has four of these sensors for redundancy, but they all need to be working for the shuttle to get cleared for launch. The launch window has been pushed back to Saturday, July 16 at 1940 UTC (2:40 pm EDT). When it finally gets off the ground, Discovery will deliver supplies to the International Space Station and test new safety procedures developed for the Return to Flight.

The European Space Agency's fleet of 4 Cluster spacecraft put a little more distance between each other, during a difficult repositioning maneuver completed this week. Three of the spacecraft were separated to 10,000 km from each other, with the fourth moving 1,000 km away from the third. By shifting the distance of the spacecraft, from 100 km to 5,000 km, and now 10,000 km, scientists are able to study the Earth's magnetic field at different scales. This maneuver also marks the fleet's fifth year of operation.

As techniques and equipment for finding extrasolar planets improve, astronomers are finding planets with smaller masses. First it was Jupiter-sized planets and larger, then Saturn-sized planets, and now Neptunians. But could these Neptune-mass planets actually be terrestrial planets, made of rock instead of gas and ice? Unlike Neptune and Uranus, these planets orbit very close to their host star. Astronomers will need to find one that transits in front of its host star to they can determine its density, to know if it's rock, ice or gas.

An international team of astronomers have discovered a hidden neutron star using three different space observatories: Integral, Swift and Rossi. The object, called IGR J16283-4838, is part of a binary system which is shrouded in thick layers of dust that obscure our view from Earth. Astronomers were able to detect it because it released a blast of gamma and X-rays that penetrated this shroud of dust. It took all three observatories to pin down the source of this blast of radiation as a neutron star.

In this beautiful image, Saturn's shepherd moon Prometheus hovers above the planet's A and F rings. It's also possible to see bright clouds on the surface of Saturn, passing through the ring shadows. This photograph was taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on June 3, 2005, when it was approximately 2.1 million km (1.3 million miles) away from Saturn.